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Born in Hong Kong, Rose looked back on his painting 40 years later: ‘Why wasn’t I looking straight at the camera... Instead I turned my eyes away – perhaps I couldn’t confront myself.’ This is in many ways an ambiguous self portrait. His boyish vulnerability, his still, unsmiling demeanour, his almost imperceptibly averted gaze are accentuated by the way his skin is shadowed on one side, and, on the other, tinged with green. His expressionless lips are a muted pink. Rose’s self portrait perhaps unconsciously reflects his own adjustment from a tropical childhood, with its great happiness and losses, to the more muted climate of post-war England. Rose enjoyed an idyllic early childhood in Hong Kong. When the Japanese invaded, his father was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, and he and his mother were interned in Stanley Camp.
Rose was a student at Royal Academy. His book, 'Waffles Goes to Town' (Faber, 1959) contains a masterly gouache, evoking London as neon-lit, car-ridden. 'Old Winkle and the Seagull' (Faber, 1960) is perhaps the most exuberantly painterly of Rose’s illustrated children’s books.
Title
Self Portrait
Date
1961
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 76 x W 55.5 cm
Accession number
PCF105
Acquisition method
acquired by Ruth Borchard as part of the original collection
Work type
Painting
